How Salesforce Built Its Platform Business
Name
MIT_CISRwp462_SalesforcePlatformBusiness_MockerSebastian.pdf
Size
3.24 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
55946b8f2d7f2a6804ee34d7e7460c82
Author(s)
Mocker, Martin
Sebastian, Ina M.
Date Issued
April 18, 2024
Publisher
Cambridge, Mass.: Center for Information Systems Research, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Citation
Mocker, Martin and Ina M. Sebastian. “How Salesforce Built Its Platform Business.” Working paper 462, Center for Information Systems Research, Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2024. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/175392.
Series/Report no.
MIT Sloan School of Management Working Paper 7364-24
CISR Working Paper 462
Abstract
In 2023, Salesforce was the provider of the CRM system with the biggest market share. Besides providing a CRM software product, the company also offered an external developer platform called Salesforce Platform. Salesforce Platform enabled CRM customers to customize their CRM system and allowed partners (third-party developers) to develop cloud apps that could be distributed via Salesforce's AppExchange marketplace. Since its official launch in 2008, Salesforce Platform had become a major revenue contributor for the company, including from over 7,000 apps in AppExchange. Building a successful platform business extended far beyond building a technology platform to nurturing an entire ecosystem around it. Based on interviews with twelve executives, this case study illustrates what it takes for a product company to build a platform business developing and scaling the business model, engineering the technology platform, growing a vivid community of developers, and marketing and selling the platform and how Salesforce addressed related challenges.
Subjects
Ecosystems
Designed for Digital
Platforms
Enterprise Architecture
Business Models
Information Technologies
Organizational Structure and Agility
Terms of Use
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